*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

At the MVP Summit 2008 I didn’t take a large amount of pictures but I did take a few.  You can view them here.

http://flickr.com/photos/keithelder/sets/72157604626519285/

For some reason, and I can’t explain it, creating a backup of my laptop has been weighing on my mind.  I haven’t gotten my Windows Home Server up and running yet thus I’m having to do it by hand right now.  Since I am about to take a cross country flight I decided to take a snapshot of things before heading out.  My tool of choice is RoboCopy which is included with Vista. 

So I don’t have to stare at the robocopy help screen again here’s how I backuped up my files to my external Western Digital 400GB My Book drive using RoboCopy.  Mainly I’m posting this for me so I won’t have to stare at the command switches again.

I was writing a test earlier today  trying to play nice with the red first green later crowd.  When I first wrote my test it showed red.  It didn’t work, this was good.  I went in and wrote what I thought was “green” code.  I ran it and whoops I didn’t mark my dummy class public so the XML serializer blew up.  My test failed again.  I fixed that quicly and ran the test again and it failed again!  I looked at the message and this was staring me in the face.

Yah.  I’m at a loss too.  Doesn’t this test know that it was suppose to pass?  I feel like Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore.    “Why won’t you just get in the hole?!!!”. 

Coming up with a name for something is one of the hardest things to do.  A name says the intent, can lock you into certain genres and much more.  I need your help in naming my up and coming podcast show.  Before you cast your vote here is the intent of the show.

A show with a Southern Flavor telling tales and stories about technology that is available today from the perspective of those who have gone through the learning curve of the technology and are ready to tell their story in a simple and easy to understand manner.

There are three choices currently on the table at the moment.

• Gumpology.Com – Technology explained so even your Grandmother can understand it.
• RustyWashers.Com – Seperating the shinny pennies and rusty washers in technology so you don’t have to.
• DevTales.Com – (no tag line, name is self explanatory)
• DeepFriedBytes.Com – Anything deep fried is good c’mon!

Here are the pros and cons of each one after shopping the names around.

Gumpology Pros

• While the first impression may be about Forrest Gump, it isn’t about Forrest at all.  It is about explaining technology so it is easier to understand.  The dumbing down of technology if you will. 
• A unique name.
• Broad, could cover a lot of things.

Gumpology Cons

• Has too much Forrest connotation with it. 
• Over used.
• Possible copyright troubles.

RustyWashers Pros

• The name is more in line with what the show is about.  The show is about tales and stories from the trenches, an aspect of that is finding the rusty washers and shinny pennies within a technology. 
• Easy to theme.
• Not technology specific, could cover lots of things
• Easy to spell 

RustyWashers Cons

• People may not identify with the name immediately.

DevTales Pros

• Fairly short name.
• The word “tales” sort of sets the show context.

DevTales Cons

• Very generic and plain
• Not very Southern sounding
• Locks the show into only development technologies

DeepFriedBytes Pros

• Everything Southern is deep fried
• Sounds techy and Southern
• Kinda funny

DeepFriedBytes Cons

• I can’t think of one

A lot of things to weigh in on no doubt.  You see why I’m struggling with this?  When in doubt, create a Poll I say!  Vote for your favorite show name here:

http://poll.pollcode.com/FPJy

UPDATED:  Add a new domain so I started the poll all over.  Revote!

Next week is the MVP Summit.  This is one of the events I have looked forward to the most since I was fortunate enough to go last year. 

MVPs from all across the world descend upon Seattle and Redmond during this week to meet with MVP Leads and product teams from Microsoft.  Someone asked me what it is like and I described it as hanging out in the speakers lounge 24/7 at a gigantic conference. 

Sunday evening is Party with Palermo.  Jeff’s parties have become a staple event for everyone to gather and have fun. 

Monday we’ll kick off the summit with a registration, a special key note, and some other break out sessions.

Tuesday we’ll be on the Microsoft campus meeting with product teams viewing the new bits and weighing in our thoughts.  Rinse and repeat for Wednesday and Thursday.

Thursday night is the Geek Lager which is going to be held at Kell’s Irish Pub right off of pike street.  If you aren’t flying out late on Thursday night or will be in the area, stop on by.  You can RSVP for the Geek Lager here as well as get more information.  The Corner Bhoys are playing that night starting around 9:00 PM.  We’ll kick things off around 7:30ish. 

As I mentioned in the title, I am planning on doing some podcasting from the summit.  My goal of the podcast sessions are to capture the real world stories about various technologies.  Thus you won’t hear anything about something that is coming down the road.  If they turn out worthy enough of publication I’ll put them up onto a new domain I have.